In order to continuously supply a web consuming apparatus with web from a succession of rolls of web material, each new roll must be spliced to the preceding roll. Desirably, this is done without diminishing the rate of forwarding web to the web consuming apparatus. As such, a continuous supply of convolutely wound rolls of web material must be supplied to the apparatus from a web material unwind apparatus in order to maintain the manufacturing speeds necessary for the production of disposable absorbent articles such as diapers and catamenial devices.
Today, in most manufacturing sites, manual operation remains the most common method for material handling and delivery. In most operations, the assembled products materials are processed on-line as webs and a vast majority of these web materials are brought to the line as planetary rolls of convolutely wound rolls of web material.
Heretofore, multi-axis robots having end effector mechanisms or gripper mechanisms have been utilized in a number of manufacturing operations for gripping an article in one location, transporting the article to another location and releasing the article. These multi-axis robots have been effective in facilitating such manufacturing operations and saving labor costs with respect to heretofore performed manual operations. Notwithstanding, such multi-axis robots with end effector mechanisms have not been utilized to a great extent in assembled article manufacturing operations since conventional end effector mechanisms on such robots are normally designed for gripping rigid articles and will not function to grip convolutely wound web materials. Moreover, there is a need in many assembled product manufacturing operations, where the convolutley wound web materials are to be transported from one location to another and to maintain the convolutely wound web material or at least the leading edge thereof in a predetermined orientation.
There is also a compelling need to eliminate the manual effort required to stage, prepare, load, and thread up web materials to feed the converting equipment to manufacture assembled goods such as catamenial devices and diapers. There is a compelling need to reduce the floor space required for material staging, preparation, loading, and unwind convolutely wound materials, inclusive of automation. Further, there is a compelling need to enable a ‘lights-out’ web material supply solution that is nearly capital equal to current unwind operations. Additionally, there is a compelling need to support agile manufacturing principles on converting lines that enable easy reconfigurability. Thus, it would be beneficial to solve these challenges of footprint, effort, and cost simultaneously. The present description solves these challenges.